Bloodline Lost
by dragonprnzess
Summary: She does not speak. A touch of her hand can open any locked door, or bring the world to an end. No one knows who she is, but Draco, Hermione, Harry and Ron are going to find out. It must be nice to be a Spellkeeper...


A/N: New fic alert! I know people are going to scream at me for typing this when I should be updating Lessons...but hey. I WILL. Soon. Hopefully. Sooo this is Bloodline Lost. It is so different from Lessons (read it! now!) you have no idea, but somehow I really really like it. I can only hope that you will too. I got some ideas from my very first fic ever, Under Your Spell (which I removed a long, long while ago), but a lot of it is also from this Harry Potter contest entry I sent in once. I didn't win, but at least my entry was mentioned in the papers. ..I'll just let you get on with it now. May this be the beginning of one kick-ass tale. Hope you like it. NOTE: Rated PG for maybe some language. I don't want to get sued. 

Token Disclaimer: I wish Harry Potter and all related indicia belonged to me. I really do. Then again, I also wish I was married to Jude Law, and that the Fab Five weren't gay. 'Nuff said.

**Bloodline Lost**   
**One: Morning Walks**

Somewhere in the world, a congregation was taking place. It was a congregation like any other, except that it was unusually small, no faces but one could be seen, and that one face looked very, very angry.

"My friends, I do believe that I have had enough."

The words came out sounding barely human, much like their speaker.

"I am a patient man. In fact, I am more of a man than _any _man on this Earth can ever possibly dream of becoming. But my patience can only last for so long, and it is wearing thin. Someone must accept responsibility for this."

"M-my Lord, if I may say so, Potter _will_ be ours sooner or later -"

"_Silence,_" Voldemort hissed.

The command was obeyed. The group of men gathered in a circle around their Master, their Lord, shifted their weight from one foot to the other nervously; some of them held their breath and all of them kept their gazes trained to the floor.

Lord Voldemort looked at the man who had spoken so optimistically. Stupidity. "Dolohov," he said, and everyone else in the room thanked their gods that they hadn't been the ones to be called upon.

Voldemort knew they all feared him beyond any other.

He reveled in it.

"My Lord," Antonin Dolohov acknowledged, inclining his head slightly. "I do believe that despicable Potter will be begging for your absolute mercy sooner rather than later...all we need is a little time..."

Voldemort raised an eyebrow - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say his expression changed slightly, because there were no eyebrows on his face - just chalky, white skin.

"Oh, really, Dolohov. I do hope you have some sort of curse up your sleeve that I do not know about, or else I'll have to kill you for speaking out of turn."

Dolohov seemed to be at a loss for words for a few seconds - and who could blame him? - but only managed to say, "My Lord, I just thought -"

"_No_, Dolohov, you did not think. Because if you had thought, you would have remembered that our dear _Harry Potter_ is under the unrelenting guard of a certain _Albus Dumbledore_." Voldemort spat out his nemeses' names as if they were a dirty swear word.

The air trembled. Under their dark hoods a few Death Eaters closed their eyes and resisted the urge to cover their ears as well; nobody wanted to witness one of their kinsmen getting killed...

"My Lord," Dolohov said quickly now, knowing that his Master's threat to kill him was not entirely talk, "there must be some way that we have not thought of to get to Harry Potter...I am certain of it..."

Voldemort's eyes seemed to blaze an even darker, fiery red.

"Oh, really. I am in no mood for idle chatter today, my friend. I give you ten seconds, and this had better be good." Voldemort was already pulling out his wand.

_Ten...nine..._

The time seemed to count itself down silently in everybody's heads.

_Eight...seven..._

"Pity," Voldemort sighed, "You were really one of my favourites."

_Six...five..._

"We could..." Dolohov said weakly, "...we could get at the boy from the inside."

"What, you mean Hogwarts? The school with fifty thousand and counting protective spells and wards over it?" Avery suddenly spoke up, laughing nastily.

"I am not averse to killing you, too, Avery," Voldemort said quietly. Avery fell silent.

Dolohov looked nervous. "Well, we don't have to get at him through Hogwarts...there's always, er...well, there's uh. I, um."

_Four...three..._

"Maybe the answer to getting rid of Potter isn't right in front of us..." Dolohov tried weakly.

"I would think that would be rather obvious."

Voldemort raised his wand.

"There could be some sort of - ancient - thing, something we haven't considered..." Dolohov faltered, and an expression of terror flickered on his face when he realized he was about to die.

_Two...one..._

He closed his eyes and waited for the spell to hit.

It didn't.

He opened his eyes and witnessed a highly unusual phenomena: Lord Voldemort was...smiling.

"_Yes..._" Voldemort hissed.

He gave a few instructions clearly, and the Death Eaters - including an extremely relieved Antonin Dolohov - immediately began to Disapparate, one by one.

They had been given nine minutes. Speed was of the essence.

Lord Voldemort's eyes burned.

Halfway across the world, in the Gryffindor dormitory, Harry Potter woke up with a start.

.:1:.

Draco Malfoy had a fondness for early morning walks. Not because the entire castle was silent as a dead winter's morning then, not because the only things that seemed to exist during that time were just him and Mother Nature and the underlying sense of _everything_ - although these things certainly did please him...

Merely because this was the only time he could walk around Hogwarts without his two lumbering "bodyguards" and escape unscathed.

Oh yes, people were afraid of him to a certain extent. But somehow people were a lot more afraid when two mountains of muscle and meat stood by either side of him, constantly cracking their knuckles and succeeding in looking extremely intimidating.

Because of this, he would unfailingly get up at about four thirty in the morning every day, get showered, dressed and groomed, make his dark green and silver bed (admittedly using magic, but then again he did like to think of himself as a tidy sort of person), and proceed to walk around Hogwarts until it was time for breakfast. Of course, there was always food on the tables of the Great Hall, but he liked to think of proper breakfasting time as eight in the morning, sharp.

It was a daily routine that he had gotten used to, and he quite liked it that way.

It was respectable, you see.

On this particular morning, Draco had gotten up at precisely four thirty-one in the a.m. He had gotten showered, dressed and groomed. He had then waved his wand, watching as his bed magically tidied itself up, and proceeded to start on his morning walk. His plan, as per routine, was to keep walking until it was time for breakfast, which, according to his watch at this moment in time, was in about an hour and a half.

So Draco walked.

After making his rounds of the Hogwarts grounds, he walked back into the castle, relishing the sound his well-polished black shoes made as they hit the cold stone floor.

_Click...click...click...click...thud._

Draco looked down and frowned. Apparently he had kicked something, and he was going to be very angry at whatever this particular object was for messing up his everyday routine.

No, he hadn't kicked anything, because there was nothing there.

He looked around for the source of the unexpected noise, expecting to see some sort of object that must have fallen onto the ground, or perhaps had been thrown down by Peeves or one of the other ghosts.

That was when he saw what it was.

Draco took a deep breath, let it out again, and walked over to said object to make sure it really was what he thought it was.

Yep, no mistakes there.

Now, Draco was not one for swearing. By this he didn't mean "Mudblood" or "bitch" or "bastard", which to him was just a form of insulting someone. He thought of swearing as the "s-word", or, even worse, the "f-word". In fact, he hadn't sworn in about four years (said swearing incident occurring when a young nephew had mistaken Draco's head for a golf ball; Draco's hair was extremely whitish after all). It was rude and uncouth, and of a manner not befitting the Malfoy family.

This was why he simply stared at the object lying in front of him and raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow.

"Oh, dear."

.:1:.

"Wow," Ron Weasley said. Then again, "Wow."

Harry rubbed his still-burning scar miserably. "Oh yeah," he sighed. "Wow."

The two best friends stared at each other wordlessly for a few moments, both of them letting this latest dream sink into their heads. They knew Harry's dreams weren't to be taken lightly, except for the ones where giant evil fuzzy purple rabbits chased him around the Great Hall naked...and even then, Harry thought, that _would _be pretty scary if it actually happened.

It was about six in the morning on what looked like it would be a cool and clear Saturday. Harry and Ron sat on Harry's bed while the rest of the Gryffindor seventh-year boys snoozed their troubles away.

"So...are we going to tell Hermione about this, then?" Ron ventured, more than a little hopefully.

Harry took his glasses off to rub his eyes and put them on again. "No, I don't think so...you know how she gets. She'd make me write an entire paper on it for Dumbledore. With footnotes for the footnotes. _Twice_." Then he added, "Sorry."

Now it was Ron's turn to look miserable. Ever since discovering that he had more than just platonic feelings for his other best friend, he never seemed to be able to hold a single conversation with her without stuttering and stammering his way to complete and utter humiliation. He was now constantly looking for subject matters to talk to her about and, in fact, had made an entire list of things he could talk about just in case another case of "Uh...uh...heh...hi..." cropped up.

"Oh, never mind," Ron sighed, waving a hand to show he had other subjects to talk about. Approximately sixty-three of them, in fact. "I'm sure I could talk to her about...the effects of eating habits on dreaming cycles or something. I'm not very intellectual," he said gloomily.

Harry gave Ron a friendly pat on the shoulder and stood up. "You know, she's probably up and studying by now. Let's go get dressed and go down to see her."

Ron brightened up considerably at the thought of talking - or at least attempting to talk to Hermione. "Wicked," he grinned, and the two smiled at each other, nightmares temporarily forgotten.

Fifteen minutes later, two freshly-scrubbed young men descended the stairs to the Gryffindor common room to find, sure enough, a diligent Hermione Granger reading through yet another frightening-looking tome of immense proportions.

"Boys," she said, looking immensely surprised at seeing Harry and Ron up. "What are you two doing up this early? On a weekend, no less?"

Harry and Ron exchanged glances.

Whoops.

"Uh...you know," Ron began, looking to Harry for support. "We were...just...out to..."

"I had a nightmare," Harry quickly said, cutting Ron off. Hermione's brow immediately creased with worry.

"_Whatever happened to not telling Hermione?_" Ron hissed into Harry's ear.

"You know, the one with the purple rabbits and all. Except this time I was clothed, just...in a bright pink kimono," Harry continued, ignoring Ron.

"_Oh,_" Harry heard Ron say, as Hermione said, "Wow. Scary."

Harry shrugged and brushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. "So, we were just thinking of going for an early breakfast. Care to join us?" He walked over to the seat facing Hermione's and sat down.

Hermione looked at the book she was reading uncertainly. "I don't know...I should probably finish this..."

"Oh, forget that stupid book," Ron interrupted, surprising even himself. "Let's go out for a walk and then have some breakfast. I'm _starving._"

Harry grinned at Ron supportively. "Yeah, Hermione...we'll have the whole castle to ourselves! It'll be great!"

Harry and Ron looked at Hermione imploringly, and finally Hermione got up with a sigh. She laughed slightly, "Fine, but if I don't manage to finish that by the end of the weekend it'll be entirely your fault."

"We can deal with that," Harry winked, and the trio made their way out onto the seventh floor corridor. "Now, let me tell you about that dream I had..."

"Please don't," Ron groaned theatrically.

Hermione just made a face at Ron and the three made their way to the Great Hall, laughing and joking everything else away. It had been a while since they'd heard from Voldemort, although there was constant news of some murder or kidnapping of some sort taking place somewhere in the world. They didn't actually believe that they were safe from the threat of his return...but sometimes it was nice to let go.

"So then," Harry laughed, "I told Snape that he could just stuff his nose up Malfoy's-"

The three rounded a sharp corner, and froze.

Draco Malfoy looked up. He was standing over an unconscious body.

"_Malfoy!!!_" the Gryffindors screamed, outraged.

Draco sighed. For the first time in four years, he allowed himself to think it.

_Fuck._

.:1:.

A/N: Mehehe. You like? You don't like? Please, please let me know. We all know how crucial reviews are to new stories. As always I appreciate comments, suggestions, bribes...advertisements...you know what I mean. Really. I promise the story gets really good (good for you, confusing for me). Now review or I'll destroy the world.


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